[Foundation-l] ASCAP comes out against "copyleft"

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 2:34 AM, jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com <
jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 1:45 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> wrote:
>
> > Andre Engels wrote:
> > > On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:17 PM,  <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > A video of an amateur singer trying to sing a song is also a copyright
> > > violation - they are publishing the song, and do not own the copyright
> > > on either text or melody.
> >
> > It *is* a violation, and that is a part of the problem.  The bloody
> > awful YouTube singer does, however, receive performance copyrights for
> > what he does.  Copyright by default means that anything, however bad or
> > trivial, has copyrights; this includes the weekly flyer from your local
> > supermarket. For all of the faults of US copyright law there was much
> > positive to be said about the former registration and renewal system.
> >
>
> see this article on the work someone did to license some songs for a cover
> cd :
> http://www.cleverjoe.com/articles/music_copyright_law.html


Mechanical licenses don't cover video sync.  Maybe if the video is really
just someone singing, no choreography or anything, you could argue that
point - I don't know.


> For public performance of a song on youtube , it would fall under
> copyright:
> http://www.ascap.com/licensing/licensingfaq.html


Does distribution via YouTube qualify as a public performance, or is it
copying/distribution?  I assume the copyright holder would argue the latter.